How Judgment Coops Work

Many enforcers are flakes, for one reason
they take all judgments,
even judgments far away from them,
Most judgment enforcers only enforce judgments close
to them, usually in
their own state. The reason is, when a judgment debtor
moves to another
state, it is more difficult and expensive to enforce
the judgment. The
only exception is when the Judgment Enforcer (JE)
travels often and works
near the courts close to where the debtor is now.

There are five ways of handling judgment enforcement
when the debtor is
not close to the current JE.

1) Work the judgment by remote control - hiring process
servers, private
investigators, and lawyers. One must also pay for
CourtCall, postage, etc.
This can become very expensive if the enforcement is
not easy.

2) Work it yourself - by traveling often to where the
debtor is.

3) Pass it along - pass the judgment to another JE as a
referral or a
lead, either for free or for some kind of compensation.

4) Refer the judgment to a judgment broker.

5) Coop - cooperate and partner with another JE to
enforce the judgment.

This article discusses the last item, judgment coops.

One of the first things to know about judgment coops is
that generally
unless one is a lawyer, one cannot enforce a judgment
unless one owns the
judgment outright 100%. For this reason, when JEs
cooperate, the ownership
is transferred to a partner JE close to the debtor's
assets. This transfer
of ownership is often not permanent. The chain of
ownership usually works
like this:

First, the Original Judgment Creditor (OJC) Assigns
(transfers legal
ownership of) their judgment to the first JE. Then the
first JE assigns
the judgment to the second JE. Then sometimes later the
Judgment is
assigned back to the first JE, or in the case of an
uncollectible
judgment, sometimes back to the OJC. When a judgment is
satisfied, the
ownership is no longer important.

Judgment cooperations starts when the first JE takes
assignment of the
judgment from the OJC, and then that JE discovers that
the debtor has
moved or has assets elsewhere.

In such a situation, the JE finds another JE close to
the debtor. It is
almost always a JE that is well-known in their state.
The details of the
judgment and the situation of the debtor is shared to
fully inform the
second JE.

Then the first JE and second JE both sign a cooperation
agreement that
specifies many things including compensation and how
any revenue collected
will be distributed.

Both JEs always respect the original JE's agreement
with the OJC. Then the
first JE assigns the judgment to the second JE. The
second JE, now owning
the judgment, recovers money from the debtor to satisfy
the judgment.

When enough money has been recovered from the debtor to
satisfy the
judgment, the judgment is satisfied by the JE currently owning
the judgment.
Sometimes the judgment is assigned back to the first JE
before it is
satisfied.

When the judgment is satisfied or settled, the second
JE, the one that
recovered money from the debtor, deducts their share.
Then they send the
rest of the money onward, so that the original judgment
creditor and the
first JE can be paid their share of the recovered
money, based on the first purchase agreement.

Judgment Coops are "old-school" but are still a popular
way for judgment
enforcers to use teamwork to go after debtors that
abscond, or simply move
far away from the original court.